Hillary Clinton Is Backed By Major Republican Donors

Authored by Eric Zuesse,

An analysis of Federal Election Commission records, by TIME, which was published on 23 October 2015, showed that the 2012 donors to Romney’s campaign were already donating more to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign than they had been donating to any one of the 2016 campaigns of (listed here in declining order below  Clinton) Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, or Jim Gilmore. Those major Romney donors also gave a little to two Democrats (other than to Hillary — who, as mentioned, received a lot of donations from these Republican donors): Martin O’Malley, Jim Web, and Lawrence Lessig. (Romney’s donors gave nothing to Bernie Sanders, and nothing to Elizabeth Warren. They don’t want either of those people to become President.)

Clinton is the only Democratic candidate who is even moderately attractive to big Republican donors.

In ascending order above Clinton, Romney’s donors were donating to: John Kasich, Scott Walker, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush. The top trio — of Bush, Cruz, and Rubio — together, received around 60% of all the money donated for the 2016 race by the people who had funded Mitt Romney’s 2012 drive for the White House.

So: the Democrat Hillary Clinton scored above 14 candidates, and below 6 candidates. She was below 6 Republican candidates, and she was above 11 Republican candidates (Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore). The 6 candidates she scored below were: Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Scott Walker, and John Kasich.

This means that, in the entire 17-candidate Republican  field, she drew more Republican money than did any one of 11 of the Republican candidates, but less Republican money than did any one of 6 of them. So, if she were a Republican (in what would then have been an 18-candidate Republican field for 2016), she would have been the 7th-from-the-top recipient of Romney-donor money.

Therefore, to Republican donors, Hillary Clinton is a more attractive prospect for the U.S. Presidency than was 64% of the then-current  17-member Republican field of candidates.

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